


Angel

by thesometimeswarrior



Category: The Frisco Kid (1979)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Doubt, Ficlet, Guilt, Judaism, Parshat Vayeshev
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:29:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21891190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: “Hey, Rabbi,” Tommy says—voice sloshed with what is either whiskey, delirium from the blood loss from the gunshot wound, or some combination of both. “You think God sent me to show you the way?”
Relationships: Avram Belinski & Tommy Lillard, Avram Belinski/Tommy Lillard
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	Angel

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I wrote _Frisco Kid_ fanfiction.
> 
> It's relevant to this week's parhsa, though, so there's that...
> 
> Also, I didn't set out for this to be as shippy as I think it ended up being, so you can interpret this as either romantic or platonic. Up to you!

“Hey, Rabbi,” Tommy says—voice sloshed with what is either whiskey, delirium from the blood loss from the gunshot wound, or some combination of both. “You think God sent me to show you the way?” 

It’s almost verbatim out of Rashi—to the point that Avram almost feels as though he’s back in yeshiva, sitting an oral examination. (As if those stuffy old Ravs had ever cared enough about the intricacies of biblical narrative to test him on Tanakh. It was always Talmud and halakha. Only Talmud and halakha…It’s not the _only_ reason why he finished bottom of his class, but it’s also not _not_ the reason. And he’s as much as a practicing Jew as anyone, certain liberties he’s taken with hilchos Shabbos these past months notwithstanding. But he’s always believed that the beauty of the Torah isn’t just in the legal code, that how it’s told—the stories, the people—matter.) 

And all the commentators seemed to agree with him, the way they’ll squabble with each other across time and space over a single word. Over the implications that that word and their squabbling sends reverberating down the narrative. 

Tommy’s question brings to mind one specific debate from the end of _Bresheet_ , when Joseph is on his way to his faithful encounter with his brothers, before they pull the wool over his eyes and sell him into Egyptian slavery. Jospeh loses his path, and it’s a stranger—whom the text only calls “a man”—that points him in the direction that eventually leads to the fulfillment of his destiny. Rashi claims that this “man” is the angel Gabriel disguised as a human being. Ibn Ezra disagrees—and Avram always imagines him rolling his eyes at Rashi in response—says the that man is just a passer-by, nothing divine about him. Ramban takes a middle ground—and in Avram’s mind, though he lived a generation after the other two, he stands between them, mediating. He _was_ just a man, Ramban says. Just a stranger. But it wasn’t an accident that he was in the right place at the right time to help shepherd Joseph along to his destiny, even if he didn’t know exactly what he was doing…

(Avram would have died in the wilderness, long ago, if Tommy hadn’t happened upon him...) 

He rather likes Ramban’s interpretation.

“Perhaps,” he responds finally.

“I must be some kinda _angel_!” Tommy laughs—gaping, giddy, and it fills the silence of the night around them.

(Avram wouldn’t have taken him for a Rashist, but there it is…)

The question that the commentators didn’t ask—and that Avram never asked _out loud_ at Yeshiva, because he would have been brushed off, mocked—is why the Torah goes out of its way to narrate the fact that, of all things, Joseph got lost on his way to his destiny and had to ask for directions. By now, though, after everything, he has a theory. It’s to highlight the importance of a chance encounter, that every stranger might be an agent of the divine—one never knows—and so you must treat each of them as though they are, no matter _who_ that stranger is…

And he’d been willing to sacrifice Tommy’s life for a _book_ , for _halakha_ , for a cold law code that grows colder every day…Tommy who had showed him the way, saved his life, kept him _warm_ in the brutal cold of the Winter…

Tommy might be an agent of the Divine, even if it he doesn’t know it, even if he thinks it’s a _joke_. And, unlike his namesake, who’d welcomed angels into his home even when he was sick, Avram had been willing to throw him away for a legal code, which was almost certainly sculpted by men so desperate to be close with God, that they’d written God out.

He knows nothing of God, except that God placed Tommy in his path. And if he has to choose between God and _halacha_ , he’ll choose God—choose _Tommy_ —every time. When he wakes and when he lies to go to sleep at night. He’ll bind it like a promise on his hand, as a symbol between his eyes, day after day after day.

That’s what one does, after all, with things Divine.

**Author's Note:**

> Just to be clear, I don't necessarily agree with Avram's total rejection of halakha here. But I think it is where his head is at at this point in the film, and I think it's ultimately swinging to this extreme that allows him to swing back to the other direction later.
> 
> A brief glossary:
> 
> - _halakha_ is traditional Jewish law.
> 
> - _Breeshet_ is the Hebrew name for the book of Genesis, the first book in the Torah.
> 
> -a _rav_ is a Rabbi
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! I love comments!


End file.
